Interview: Tristan Davies, Independent on Sunday (Evening Standard)
By Daivd Rowan
In the Sunday broadsheet race, it long ago limped back to a distant fourth place out of four. So can a new "quality compact" format finally revive the fortunes of a thinly resourced Independent on Sunday?
After a frustrating two-year delay, Tristan Davies is about to find out. Forced to wait while resources were diverted to the daily paper, and then further held back while the company monitored the impact of the Guardian relaunch, Davies belatedly unveils his baby this weekend. The five-section tabloid, pitched as "meaty but easier to read", is intended to attract tens of thousands of new readers, following the success of the reformatted daily. It could certainly use them: behind its current headline circulation of 202,248, the Sindy's UK full-price sales are down to just 131,216. The Observer, its nearest competitor, sells more than 200,000 more.
Davies, a relaxed, amiable father of three who turns 44 this month - his long hair and warm intonation perfect for the radio career he initially craved - appears unfazed by the challenge ahead. "We are the smallest selling of the quality Sundays, that's a fact of life," he says without edge in his Isle of Dogs office. "But our circulation story of the last 18 months has been the most stable it's ever been. We're not worried - we're comfortable about where we are, but now we want to move on and up."
Davies has certainly lacked his rivals' resources: the Sindy's entire marketing budget for the past two years was just £20,000, allowing none of the free DVDs and flight offers that have buoyed their newsstand sales. "We couldn't do all those things that buy readership, so we've had to survive on our wits," Davies reflects. "It's been frustrating watching the daily having the resources and doing so well, knowing that we could do it too, and we feel this is our time. Yes, we're fourth out of four among the quality Sundays. But we will go up. The fact that we're first [changing format] is a good thing for us."
He will not be drawn on his precise circulation target, other than that he expects "a significant boost", particularly among women. "I'm not just looking to convert the broadsheet paper into tabloid form," he explains. "On the daily, they had to take a sceptical and slightly worried readership in and then develop gradually. But we've been able to think, right, we can start again." The result, he says, will be "dramatically different both in format and design", while eschewing any "bells and whistles" that would unnecessarily confuse readers.
He has given a consultancy role to Jocelyn Targett, one-time Guardian-Observer enfant terrible, and hired a new designer, Victor Gil, from Barcelona. But the new package is certainly no journalistic revolution. The main section, up to 104 pages, divides fairly conventionally into news, comment, foreign, a news review, and then sport at the back. There is a 24-page pull-out travel supplement, planned as a weekly themed guidebook, and separate business, arts and Sunday Review sections.
Ease of navigation has been foremost in Davies's mind: a 40-page news run has been broken up with diary elements, vox pops and editorial devices he admits to having "shamelessly stolen" from The Week magazine. As with The Guardian, a picture-based story occupies the centre spread.
There have been mischievous suggestions among rivals that this is a last desperate attempt to save the paper, whose losses have squeezed resources at The Independent. Davies dismisses them. "Oh God, how many times have I heard 'the last throw of the dice' argument? That's such an old cliché. They can say what they like, but we need to concentrate on our own game. I'm really not that concerned." The Guardian group, in particular, has its own worries, he suggests: having spent almost £100 million on its own relaunch, it has stolen fewer than 5,000 sales from The Independent.
Yet as the Sindy's eighth editor since its 1990 launch, none of whom could achieve the elusive turnaround, Davies must be aware of the financial drain it has placed on the group. If it didn't already exist, it surely wouldn't make business sense to launch it now? "Actually, it would," he counters. "The Independent on Sunday accounts for 25 or 26 per cent of ad revenue for the whole UK group, on just one day. The paper makes a lot of money for this company."
Ah, but revenue doesn't mean profit. "I'm not sure how profitable the paper is as a separate entity, but that's not how it's looked at," he responds. "The important thing is the paper is here and the company is sufficiently excited about it, has sufficient faith, that they're putting in more money." Editorial budgets are up. "That's not the action of a company giving up or worried."
Yet the brutal question remains: if it cannot make its way in the marketplace, why does Tony O'Reilly's publishing house keep the paper going? What, indeed, is its point of difference on which it can compete commercially? Davies dismisses the question as outdated. "People don't ask that any more, because they know what it's for," he says. "This paper earns its spurs on a number of things - probably the most important for my editorship was the Iraq war, which we were first and most aggressive in opposing.
"We have the courage of our convictions, whether on the war, the asthma campaign, the mental-health campaign. With a free CD, anyone can put on 80,000 [readers] who disappear the next week. We've survived on the strength of how we've covered news and features."
Where are his big scoops, then? "Sure, we're not going to be first in line with the chequebook for any story," he says. "Massive scoops are hard to come by. But we broke the British connection with the 7/7 bombers. We're particularly good on terror and intelligence. And when a big story breaks on a Saturday, then you'll see it doesn't matter whether you've got three times the staff."
Apart from a two-year spell with Simon Kelner at the Mail on Sunday's Night & Day, Davies has spent most of his career at the two Independents. He trained as a radio journalist after studying at Bristol, but found work on a free Covent Garden newspaper edited by Jim White, the writer and columnist. When White moved to launch The Independent's listings pages, Davies joined him, gradually working his way up through arts and features. "I love this paper," he says. "It is absolutely home."
Within the paper, his closeness to Kelner - some describe him as "Simon's longer arm" - is said to have inhibited the emergence of a distinct Sindy identity. But Davies disputes the suggestion that he is a mere satellite. "Simon is my boss as editor-in-chief, and is a close friend, but we're rivals," he insists. "I want my paper to be better than his." For all the shared resources, there are no plans to create a seven-day operation, he says. "We have separate editing teams and separate identities. A Sunday paper has to be distinctive."
But can it achieve this goal with a far smaller budget than its rivals? What of the book buy-ins or star columnists that boost newsstand sales? "We have lots of our own talent," he responds. "There are no outside voices I have a huge envy for. The smaller budget has never bothered me as an editor. The fact is, I have the tools to do the job. We are a small and tight team and we constantly outwit our much bigger rivals. It takes a second to score a goal; it takes a few more seconds to have a good idea."
So a change in format will be the big idea that turns things around? "You can't let the format do all the work," Davies says. "It's always going to be about the content. And that's down to good stories."
But in the meantime, he knows that a change in shape is the best hope his paper has.
(Evening Standard, October 12 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
In the Sunday broadsheet race, it long ago limped back to a distant fourth place out of four. So can a new "quality compact" format finally revive the fortunes of a thinly resourced Independent on Sunday?
After a frustrating two-year delay, Tristan Davies is about to find out. Forced to wait while resources were diverted to the daily paper, and then further held back while the company monitored the impact of the Guardian relaunch, Davies belatedly unveils his baby this weekend. The five-section tabloid, pitched as "meaty but easier to read", is intended to attract tens of thousands of new readers, following the success of the reformatted daily. It could certainly use them: behind its current headline circulation of 202,248, the Sindy's UK full-price sales are down to just 131,216. The Observer, its nearest competitor, sells more than 200,000 more.
Davies, a relaxed, amiable father of three who turns 44 this month - his long hair and warm intonation perfect for the radio career he initially craved - appears unfazed by the challenge ahead. "We are the smallest selling of the quality Sundays, that's a fact of life," he says without edge in his Isle of Dogs office. "But our circulation story of the last 18 months has been the most stable it's ever been. We're not worried - we're comfortable about where we are, but now we want to move on and up."
Davies has certainly lacked his rivals' resources: the Sindy's entire marketing budget for the past two years was just £20,000, allowing none of the free DVDs and flight offers that have buoyed their newsstand sales. "We couldn't do all those things that buy readership, so we've had to survive on our wits," Davies reflects. "It's been frustrating watching the daily having the resources and doing so well, knowing that we could do it too, and we feel this is our time. Yes, we're fourth out of four among the quality Sundays. But we will go up. The fact that we're first [changing format] is a good thing for us."
He will not be drawn on his precise circulation target, other than that he expects "a significant boost", particularly among women. "I'm not just looking to convert the broadsheet paper into tabloid form," he explains. "On the daily, they had to take a sceptical and slightly worried readership in and then develop gradually. But we've been able to think, right, we can start again." The result, he says, will be "dramatically different both in format and design", while eschewing any "bells and whistles" that would unnecessarily confuse readers.
He has given a consultancy role to Jocelyn Targett, one-time Guardian-Observer enfant terrible, and hired a new designer, Victor Gil, from Barcelona. But the new package is certainly no journalistic revolution. The main section, up to 104 pages, divides fairly conventionally into news, comment, foreign, a news review, and then sport at the back. There is a 24-page pull-out travel supplement, planned as a weekly themed guidebook, and separate business, arts and Sunday Review sections.
Ease of navigation has been foremost in Davies's mind: a 40-page news run has been broken up with diary elements, vox pops and editorial devices he admits to having "shamelessly stolen" from The Week magazine. As with The Guardian, a picture-based story occupies the centre spread.
There have been mischievous suggestions among rivals that this is a last desperate attempt to save the paper, whose losses have squeezed resources at The Independent. Davies dismisses them. "Oh God, how many times have I heard 'the last throw of the dice' argument? That's such an old cliché. They can say what they like, but we need to concentrate on our own game. I'm really not that concerned." The Guardian group, in particular, has its own worries, he suggests: having spent almost £100 million on its own relaunch, it has stolen fewer than 5,000 sales from The Independent.
Yet as the Sindy's eighth editor since its 1990 launch, none of whom could achieve the elusive turnaround, Davies must be aware of the financial drain it has placed on the group. If it didn't already exist, it surely wouldn't make business sense to launch it now? "Actually, it would," he counters. "The Independent on Sunday accounts for 25 or 26 per cent of ad revenue for the whole UK group, on just one day. The paper makes a lot of money for this company."
Ah, but revenue doesn't mean profit. "I'm not sure how profitable the paper is as a separate entity, but that's not how it's looked at," he responds. "The important thing is the paper is here and the company is sufficiently excited about it, has sufficient faith, that they're putting in more money." Editorial budgets are up. "That's not the action of a company giving up or worried."
Yet the brutal question remains: if it cannot make its way in the marketplace, why does Tony O'Reilly's publishing house keep the paper going? What, indeed, is its point of difference on which it can compete commercially? Davies dismisses the question as outdated. "People don't ask that any more, because they know what it's for," he says. "This paper earns its spurs on a number of things - probably the most important for my editorship was the Iraq war, which we were first and most aggressive in opposing.
"We have the courage of our convictions, whether on the war, the asthma campaign, the mental-health campaign. With a free CD, anyone can put on 80,000 [readers] who disappear the next week. We've survived on the strength of how we've covered news and features."
Where are his big scoops, then? "Sure, we're not going to be first in line with the chequebook for any story," he says. "Massive scoops are hard to come by. But we broke the British connection with the 7/7 bombers. We're particularly good on terror and intelligence. And when a big story breaks on a Saturday, then you'll see it doesn't matter whether you've got three times the staff."
Apart from a two-year spell with Simon Kelner at the Mail on Sunday's Night & Day, Davies has spent most of his career at the two Independents. He trained as a radio journalist after studying at Bristol, but found work on a free Covent Garden newspaper edited by Jim White, the writer and columnist. When White moved to launch The Independent's listings pages, Davies joined him, gradually working his way up through arts and features. "I love this paper," he says. "It is absolutely home."
Within the paper, his closeness to Kelner - some describe him as "Simon's longer arm" - is said to have inhibited the emergence of a distinct Sindy identity. But Davies disputes the suggestion that he is a mere satellite. "Simon is my boss as editor-in-chief, and is a close friend, but we're rivals," he insists. "I want my paper to be better than his." For all the shared resources, there are no plans to create a seven-day operation, he says. "We have separate editing teams and separate identities. A Sunday paper has to be distinctive."
But can it achieve this goal with a far smaller budget than its rivals? What of the book buy-ins or star columnists that boost newsstand sales? "We have lots of our own talent," he responds. "There are no outside voices I have a huge envy for. The smaller budget has never bothered me as an editor. The fact is, I have the tools to do the job. We are a small and tight team and we constantly outwit our much bigger rivals. It takes a second to score a goal; it takes a few more seconds to have a good idea."
So a change in format will be the big idea that turns things around? "You can't let the format do all the work," Davies says. "It's always going to be about the content. And that's down to good stories."
But in the meantime, he knows that a change in shape is the best hope his paper has.
(Evening Standard, October 12 2005)
. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, October 12, 2005
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